1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to an advertising an marketing coupon and the method of manufacturing and using it in the field of the commerce with products and services.
2. Description of the Prior Art
There is well known a multi-product coupon (U.S. Pat. No. 4,195,864) with which by attaching some tickets on a base coupon one can buy products with a reduction noted on the respective tickets. This type of coupon offers a discount only to the purchaser of the product.
The method (U.S. Pat. No. 4,195,864) consists in printing of a base coupon without value, having individualized locations indicating a type of product each, printing of a plurality of discount tickets identifying a different type of product each, providing the means to attach the tickets on the base coupon in order to form a discount coupon whose value is determined by the attached tickets. This method has the disadvantage that offering a discount only to the customers, they and the retailers are not stimulated to become promoters and to recommend the products or services.
There are some patents related to advertising which are based on computer systems. As an example it can be mentioned U.S. Pat. No. 5,537,314 which relates to a credit accumulation and accessing system for a plurality of sponsoring companies and participants having at each sponsoring company location a common bus which communicates with participant data input, performance data input, computer processing memory, an award output device, an input/output device and a central control center.
As another example we can also mention a multilevel marketing system (WO96/36926) where participants interact with a computer system to receive advertising, respond to market surveys, or place purchase orders.
None of these computer based systems involve the retailer and buyers as advertising promoters for products and the system at the same time and none of them use for demo purposes sold products and coupons.